The Swedish Parliament reaffirms Andesson as Prime Minister / Article

Andesson will now become Sweden’s 34th Prime Minister and the first woman to head the Swedish government. Although Sweden is considered one of the most advanced countries in Europe in the field of gender equality, only men have held the highest political office so far.

Highly minority government

Swedish law does not require a majority of parliamentarians to approve a candidate for prime minister. The main thing is that the majority does not vote against the candidate. 101 deputies voted in favor of approving the Prime Minister, 173 voted against and 75 deputies abstained. So only two votes were missing to reject Andesson’s candidacy.

Andesson is already preparing to present the composition of the next government on Tuesday. For the first time in 15 years, Sweden is expected to have only a government represented by the Social Democratic Party. As this will be a distinct minority government, any further decisions will need to be negotiated with the support of other political parties. The Social Democrats have only 100 of the 349 seats in the Swedish parliament.

“Like all minority governments, we will have to try to work with other parties in parliament. We have a long history of cooperation and we are ready to do whatever it takes for Sweden to move forward,” Andesson said.

We have to work with the budget adopted by the opposition

The Andesson government will have to deal with the state budget approved by the opposition parties, as parliament rejected the government’s draft budget last week, which also led to such a rapid collapse of the ruling coalition and the resignation of Andesson just seven hours after approval.

The change of head of government in Sweden took place just ten months before the parliamentary elections scheduled for September next year.

Andesson has expressed hope that she will stay in the chair of the prime minister for much longer than ten months. “I don’t see it as a ten-month job; I see it as a ten-year job,” the new Swedish prime minister said.

The Minister of Finance has been promoted

Andeshson replaced Stefan Leven, who had ruled for seven years. He already announced in Augustthat he will leave the post of chairman and head of government of the Social Democratic Party in November.

Andesson, 54, has been finance minister until now. In early November he was elected as chairman of the Social Democratic Party, which gave Andesson the opportunity to become head of government.

Andesson is an economist by training, graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics, the Research Institute in Vienna and Harvard University in the USA. Her husband Richard Friberg is a professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics and they have two children.

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